Full failure

At the beginning of March, Sevastopol -Simferopol, the landfill, destroyed the landslide. The Sevastopol authorities introduced an emergency regime in the city, and for cars, buses and trucks organized a detour. 70 million rubles were allocated from the budget to restore the emergency route. They promise to finish repairs to May holidays, but not the fact that they will be in time. The Radio correspondent Freedom observed the way the road work was going on, and talked with the residents of the neighboring village, on which the endless flows of cars are now stretched day and night.

A giant crack in the asphalt, leaving in the distance by tens of meters. The sagging road, which was crumpled like a foil wrapper, and pulled down the slope with a monstrous force. These creepy pictures taken on the Sevastopol highway - Simferopol in early March, flew around the Internet. If the filmmakers planned to shoot a catastrophe film in Crimea, then it would be difficult to dream of the best scenery.

The failure turned out to be so photogenic that many Sevastopols went to look at a new natural attraction, as if emitting from the novel Ilf and Petrov. However, in its original form, the landslide did not last long. Now there is no trace of the previous “beauty”: full -scale road works are underway on the emergency site, local media testify . To see it with my own eyes, I go to the scene.

The landslide occurred on the 55th kilometer of the Sevastopol-Simferopol road, near the turning and fruit. From a hero city to a problematic site for half an hour drive along the so-called presidential highway: it was erected on the nineties on the detour of the Sevastopol suburbs so that it would be more convenient for the first persons of Ukraine and their foreign guests to get from Belbek airport to response residences on the southern coast of Crimea. Now, due to the failure on the highway, unusually empty. Mostly lovers of high speeds are chosen here: no one gets confused under your feet, and therefore you can drive for pleasure.

As we approached the landslide, signs are increasingly appearing that warn that the passage is closed ahead. Finally, in a few hundred meters, the road is completely blocked. You have to leave the car and walk. Zevaki, apparently, were so tired of the repairmen that they put up the guard: on the way to failure, a road worker misses the uniform, which says that you can’t go further. I present, show a journalistic crust.

“I have a list of those who can be allowed,” says the worker. - The rest are forbidden to pass.

However, after several minutes of negotiations, the road worker agrees to skip me and even tells me how to find the construction chief. I go further and see that, compared with the March pictures, the landscape has changed beyond recognition. The asphalt layer is completely wrapped, the excavator scoops up the soil with a bucket and loads it into dump trucks, which leave the construction site one after another and go to empty the garbage training ground.

According to the Sevastopol Government, 15 units of equipment and 24 people are employed at the facility. However, both those and others are visually. The company of the top ten workers consists of several trucks, a tank with resin, an excavator and a couple of business -free loaders who are scolding around the site. A little lower along the slope, several more people with chainsaws at the ready are freed by the embankment from vegetation. On machines, cabins and other construction property is the marking of the company "LTK Group". This private Simferopol company won a tender for the repair of an emergency site worth 25 million rubles. If necessary, they promised to increase the amount.

A section of the road destroyed by the elements was built in the 70s of the last century. In this place, the automobile highway leaves the Belbek River Valley, climbs the hill and then goes towards the Sevastopol Bay. To smooth out the height difference a little, the road was laid along a huge artificial embankment. 10-15 years ago, problems began with her. In the upper part of the embankment, in the same place, from time to time began to sag asphalt. It was rolled up with a new layer, but soon the "waves" appeared there again.

Crimean drivers say that they studied the insidious area well and in this place they always dropped the speed to a minimum. And the unsuspecting visiting motorists over and over again at full speed bounced on bumps. There were often accidents. This spring, after heavy rains, the road came to an end. Ground and superficial waters werehed the soil, voids formed in the embankment, and the asphalt canvas, breaking under its own weight, moved into the abyss.

The representative of the "LTK Group" Alexei Pshenichnov , responsible for working on the site, arranges me with a small tour of the facility. According to him, now the first stage of work is underway - dismantling. At this stage, the entire asphalt coating and the moving part of the embankment will be removed from the scene of the accident - thousands of cubic meters of asphalt concrete, crushed stone and soil.

To date, the task was done approximately half (the head of the department for providing civil defense measures Sevastopol Evgeny Polyakov confirmed this information, evaluating the amount of work performed at 45% of the planned). This already had its fruits: after the workers removed the asphalt layer, which reached half a meter in thickness, the pressure on the soil decreased and the landslide process stopped. At first, the failure increased by 10-15 centimeters per day.

- The collapse did not occur at one point. This problem has long been. The soil sagged, but they did everything that they (workers of road services. - approx. RS) was laid in layers a new asphalt, says the foreman.

An important step in the work was the cleaning of the drainage system.

- You need to care for the road, understand? He continues, talking about the causes of landslide. - We must support the culvert. When they built the road, the correct "drainage" was laid under it. All the water flowing from the slopes gathered in a ditch and was diverted through a wide pipe, which lay in the embankment across the road. But when we started work, we did not see the ditches or pipes, everything was overgrown with bushes and was packed with garbage and earth. When they dug up the pipe, it turned out to be dry inside. The water did not get there, but seeped directly into the embankment and eroded the soil.

Pshenichnov leads me past concrete trays laid along the roadside of the highway. In them, rainwater was supposed to drain from the highway and get into the same drainage. But this did not happen: the ditch was also filled with earth and "had no performance."

When everything is restored, the drainage system must remain clean. Otherwise, everything will crawl again

- All this has not been cleaned for decades. Nothing was done. The road was on the balance of the city, but they did not follow it. I personally took out the machine of household garbage from here, ”says my guide. - When everything is restored, the drainage system must remain clean. Otherwise, everything will crawl again.

What the road workers will do after they take all the mobile soil, they themselves do not know. This will depend on what the specialists of the Crimegeology company will say, who have already drilled almost two dozen wells in the embankment, trying to understand how the soil behaves at a depth. Scientists have discovered in the soil of voids up to 20 centimeters. Now they think how dangerous it is.

Sevastopol geologists, who went to the scene and carefully studied everything, told me in an informal setting that there are several ways to strengthen the crawling embankment. The easiest and cheapest way is to close the failure of the crushed stone pillow. But this will help only if the collapse is no longer increasing and the slope will not crawl. At the base of the embankment, geologists have discovered longitudinal cracks, but so far they do not increase in size, and this is good news.

A more expensive, but also more reliable option is to build a retaining wall or strengthen the embankment with stuffed piles. The piles should be several tens of meters long so that they reach the root rock and rest against it. You can also make a picket fence of shorter piles, and then they will play the role of reinforcement, holding the soil in the embankment from spreading. Scientists asked not to indicate in the report of their names, because, according to them, there are no drilling results, official expert conclusions do prematurely.

How soon a decision will be made on further work, the government of Sevastopol is not said. Which, however, does not prevent officials from arguing that in any case, the updated road will be commissioned by early May, and the total cost of repairs will not come beyond the limits of 70 million rubles allocated from the reserve fund.

According to the representative of the contracting company, there is no need to work in emergency mode yet, everything is going according to plan:

- Today the deputy governor Vladimir Bazarov came, members of the commission - everyone is satisfied. You can write like that.

From the place of landslide, I go to the village of a turning point. To the nearest residential buildings - several tens of meters. And although the road workers argue that there are no threats of landing on residential buildings, ”local residents are clearly restless. Around the failure, three bypasses are organized. One of the roads (the shortest, and therefore the most popular) is laid right along the rural streets. The noise of the construction and endless flickering of cars in front of the windows were tired of the villagers. The fact that the turning point suddenly ended up in the center of events did not bring them any dividends.

- The movement is constant around the clock, noise, dust flies. I always have linen in the yard, now I don’t hang it - it becomes gray right away, ”the young woman complains at the entrance to the grocery store.

The gastrona itself resembles a selmag of the era of stagnation: bare white walls, Soviet windows, ancient scales on the counter. The saleswoman gives me a bottle of soda.

They expected that, as the repair of the route would begin, maybe at least a little and the village would be put in order. No, what is there!

- They expected that, how the repair of the route would begin, maybe at least a little and the village would be put in order. No, what is there! They made only the road for a detour, they hung some signs, and that’s all, ”she says.

- Officials or deputies did not come to you, did not ask how to help?

- Maybe they asked people, but no one came to me ... In general, our life is bad, there is nowhere to work. Although, of course, who wants to, finds a job.

The central part of the village is matching the store: a shabby concrete stop, a holey asphalt, garbage, residential huts, tired of life at least their inhabitants. Of the new elements of improvement, there is only a metal stand with announcements about the hours of receiving municipal deputies and the phone number of the district inspector.

When I take pictures of a residential two -story building, a local resident is nauseous.

- Young man! Why do you photograph our "beautiful" house?

- The report came to do about the road.

- Just about the road? Do you want about us?

- I certainly want to.

- Well then, admire, the house is falling apart. These are our business. Nothing is done at all, is not repaired, the pipes flow, they asked the roof - and then they themselves had to dump. They don’t remember us at all.

-Is something changed over the past three years?

- In Ukraine, they did nothing, and did not become in Russia. We were transferred from the state farm (name of Sofia Perovskaya. - approx. RS) to the city - that’s all that has changed.

-They say that someone from the government comes to the construction site every day. Maybe you will be paid attention to.

“Yes, they are so touched so that they do not see us.” Although no, today someone was going through. Didn't stop.

From the village I go to the test drive of the bypass road. The highway from Sevastopol to Simferopol in the old days looped over the hills above the turning point and then went down to the village. After they built a new highway (the very one that has collapsed), the old road was abandoned. Bushes sprouted through the cracked asphalt, the roadsides fell asleep with stones. When there was a landslide, the roadsides were cleaned and expanded, they put the road in a habit and launched cars. True, it is possible to go at a minimum speed, but still this path is much more convenient than alternative detours: through the village of Lyubimovka and the north side, buses and trucks go, which is why traffic jams constantly arise there; Through the villages of Ternovka and the tank has to make a huge hook, and the road there is not a road, but one name.

The Government of Sevastopol promised to align the road through the turning point so that all types of transport could move along it (although rare buses and wagons on it can be found now). The residents of the village will bring some troubles, but you can forget about traffic jams. According to the head of the public organization "Road Control - Sevastopol" Maxim Mishin , it was the restoration of the old highway through the turning point "that made it possible to minimize the crushing phenomena."

In an interview with me, a public activist said that the city authorities are quite capable of repairing the main route by the end of April.

- I am sure that the road will be restored. For one simple reason - there is already work directly at Kon, the head of the Department of Transport Sevastopol ( Igor Titov. - Approx. RS ). If he does not fulfill, then I am more than sure that he will be fired. Therefore, he is interested in this. If the road is not restored, then for the May holidays, forks on this section of the highway, of course, will be, because a fairly large number of guests of the city use the main artery, ”said Mishin.

If the repair is delayed, then transport problems can worsen in the summer months, when there will be even more tourists than in May. However, representatives of the local tourism business do not believe that the landslide on the highway, even in the worst situation, can adversely affect the holiday season.

- There is just a kilometer there, excursion buses can safely drive, no problems. In addition, a very large share of tourists enters Sevastopol from Yalta, and this is another road where there are no more landslide. We do not think that this whole situation will scare away someone at least, ”Zebra-Tour company are confident.